whenever you're in trouble
the how to series
for jeff and myr
They’re out on the steps for a long time, but they can’t stay there forever.
Zito takes him upstairs and makes Mulder stand perfectly still, taking off his jacket and unbuttoning his jeans. Mulder can see Zito biting his lip, blinking very fast. Mulder can watch his own pulse in the dent of his hip. Zito bends his head and kisses Mulder’s chest and Mulder is still mostly sure this is a dream. Because Zito is too smart to have taken him back.
But he’s back.
It’s a good night. Maybe the best night. Mulder wants to say it over and over again, love you love you never leave, but he doesn’t, because Zito’s got that pretty jagged smile on his face, like he can’t believe it either, and if Mulder says the wrong thing, it’ll go away again. Zito is solid under Mulder’s hands, warm and strong, like he was never a three-weeks ghost, a shadow after the light’s been turned on.
Nothing is the same. Zito is nervous and he holds onto Mulder’s wrists in something like panic, and Mulder keeps kissing him, as if to say, breathe. Zito asks once, “are you sure?” and Mulder laughs into Zito’s throat, his eyes wet, his heart jangling loosely in his chest.
They fall asleep, a mess of arms and legs and Zito’s hair sticking to the film of sweat on Mulder’s stomach. They wake up and Zito wants to know, “what happens next?”
It’s unclear. Go to the ballpark, avoid the press, badly keep a secret and get caught again, get run out of town and left for dead on the side of the highway. Go to the ballpark. Mulder needs to go home and change his clothes. Zito needs to get gas. They need to get to the ballpark.
Mulder is thinking out loud as they drink coffee for breakfast, his free hand lightly caught up in Zito’s hair. Maybe they’ll stay away from each other for the few weeks remaining in the season, and once no one’s paying attention anymore, Zito can come to Scottsdale and they can live out the winter on golf courses, the Spanish tile shattered on the driveway of Mulder’s house. Maybe they should have a rule that only one of them is allowed to be drunk on any given night, and the other one can make sure he doesn’t let anything slip. Maybe they can fake their deaths and just get out.
Zito just smiles at him and shakes his head, his ear sliding across Mulder’s palm. Mulder says, apropos of nothing, “I’m not ashamed.”
Zito looks surprised, his neck suddenly tense against Mulder’s wrist.
Go to the ballpark.
For a week, Mulder stays close beside him and waits for someone to say, what the hell? For the old rumors to stir up and attack them, and he believes he’ll be able to hook an arm around Zito’s waist and pull him flush and glare, say sharply, yeah, you got a fuckin’ problem with it?
But no one says anything. Zito keeps checking over his shoulder, dark eyes slashed to pieces by strands of his hair, and he jumps at loud noises, a crack of laughter, a bottle broken on the cement floor. Mulder watches him and wants more than anything to take that uncertainty out of his face, make Zito believe again that Mulder will not do anything to hurt him.
Another week and Zito clears out a drawer in his dresser for Mulder’s stuff. He says to Mulder over painkillers and chocolate, “love the hell out of you, man.” Mulder falls asleep next to him on the couch and wakes up to Zito saying his name in a dream.
Billy Beane has started giving them looks like his suspension of disbelief is close to its limit, and Mulder tightens his jaw and smiles blamelessly at him, his hands twitching for Zito’s collar or the fringe of Zito’s hair, held down as if by wires. Billy Beane’s gonna kill them when he finds out. Not for the secret so much as the lie. Of course, Beane will have to get in line.
A third week and Mulder sends Anthony Pearl a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge that says, ‘Thanks,’ on the back, and nothing else. Zito draws messy pictures in ballpoint pen on Mulder’s arms, and licks salt out of the hollow of Mulder’s collarbone, his mouth fired with tequila and a lime tucked into his cheek. Mulder is drunk on Zito’s liquor and the flat place under Zito’s ribs, and he tells Zito, “if it happens again, let me be the one to tell everybody.”
Zito doesn’t think it’ll happen again, because nobody’s that unlucky, but Mulder knows better. Mulder never wins at cards.
The season ends. They go their separate ways, just for a week or two, just to get baseball out of their systems, get their sleep patterns back in order. They talked it over rationally, didn’t want to end up snapping at each other in the dead slow time of early November, but Mulder lasts about nineteen hours in Scottsdale before he drives out to Hollywood. He finds Zito throwing a duffel bag into the trunk of his car, a roadmap of the Southwest sticking up out of his pocket, and Mulder kisses him half-dead right there in the driveway, not giving a shit who can see them.
Mulder tells him before Christmas, “I’m glad it happened. I’d never have figured it out otherwise.”
Zito shakes his head, whispers, “yeah you would’ve.” Zito won’t take credit for Anthony Pearl or their brief national celebrity. Zito won’t take credit for anything, because it was bound to happen.
The off-season is a sheaf of days so perfect they make Mulder think of the end of the world. They split their time between Zito’s place and Mulder’s, lizards skittering across the deck in Scottsdale, white seabirds on the power-lines over Hollywood, and the sheets at Zito’s house are blue, the sheets at Mulder’s are pinstripe-gray, and they stop at the same truck stop every time they make the drive, buying warped pieces of copper and plastic toys that fall apart before they get back.
Zito doesn’t leave marks anymore, except sometimes just for fun. He tells Mulder, “It was like if I marked you up, you wouldn’t be able to leave.” Mulder doesn’t try to make sense of that; he doesn’t try to make sense of anything, because everything’s okay.
He dreams of flashbulbs and press conferences, and spring training is zeroing in on them. They should tell Billy Beane, they should call a team meeting, they should stand up in front of the others and Mulder should put his hand on the back of Zito’s neck and say, “Okay?”
But they won’t. And on the night before they’re due to report, they drive down to the Colorado River and park with the lights of the dam high like kites in their peripheral vision, the water gnashing at the banks. They sit on the hood of the car and they’re still a secret, so nothing’s changed.
Mulder asks Zito, “How much longer do you think we can keep going like this?”
Zito glows like stars, Zito tells him, “As long as they’ll let us, dude.”
Mulder swallows. “And after that?”
Grinning up at the snake-black sky with his throat laid out, Zito says happily, “After that we’ll go someplace new.”